Driverless car uses cruise missile tech to get you home

DO you hate motorway driving and tackling rush-hour traffic? Well, in the not too distant future, such journeys could be a breeze thanks to the driverless CyCab.
Using GPS technology similar to that, which guides cruise missiles, the vehicles follow a path programmed by a touchscreen. Standard GPS is only accurate to within a few metres so the CyCab is equipped with a special type called real-time kinematic GPS, which is accurate to about a centimetre.
Developed by French company INRIA over 10 years, the Cycab looks like a futuristic golf cart. It uses a laser to avoid obstacles in its pathand a dual-lens camera to follow road markings. It can even be navigated from a mobile phone. Each CyCab also communicates via the internet. This means that the vehicles can share information so that they can follow one another at a small distance, or surf the web and gather real-time traffic information so that they can avoid traffic jams.
An automated voice gives information to passengers along the route, much like the KITT car from the popular TV series Knight Rider, which starred David Hasselhoff.
As of November, holidaymakers arriving and leaving at Heathrow’s Terminal 5 will be able to use a British version of these driverless cars called ULTras. They were developed by Advanced Transport Systems Ltd in association with the University of Bristol.
The idea is that once you’ve picked up your bags you head off to a ‘pod berth’ where you select a destination using a smart card and a touchscreen.
Manufacturers say you should only need to wait ten seconds. It then heads non-stop by the best available route to your carpark.
When you get there you leave the vehicle, which may either stay there or be redirected by central control to where it is needed. The central control managing the vehicles makes sure each pod is on a different path so that there are no collisions. Last month delegates from 16 countries watched the system in action at Heathrow and saw once of the vehicles automatically arrive and depart from ground-level stations in virtual silence. – DM